Germany Sees Rise in Crimes with Political or Racist Motives

Germany Sees Rise in Crimes with Political or Racist Motives

Article excerpt

Interior Ministry figures show an 11.2 percent overall increase
of crimes carried out for political or ideological reasons across
Germany.

Politically motivated violent crimes in Germany increased by
nearly 18 percent in 2011, a year in which two U.S. airmen were
killed by an Islamist extremist and a neo-Nazi cell identified as
carrying out a series of previously unsolved murders of immigrants
was uncovered.

Numbers released by the Interior Ministry on Friday showed an
11.2 percent overall increase to 30,216 of crimes carried out for
political or ideological reasons across the country. More than 70
percent of the crimes involved groups on the extreme left or extreme
right, and many were acts of vandalism during regional elections in
several states last year.

While the circulation of illegal propaganda, which includes all
printed material associated with the Nazis, remained the most common
politically motivated crime, the number of racially motivated
attacks grew by more than 16 percent. …